Bats around the lake

[JayDV]

I never really thought about it before but, where do the bats around the lake go during the winter?

According to this article, bats find a nice cave to sleep the winter away. Are there caves of this sort near the lake? Also, the article discusses the concern over the impending perish of those specific bats in the NY Adirondacks and parts of VT due to unidentified reasons. Are the lake bats in similar jeopardy?

[jrc]

Originally Posted by JayDV

I never really thought about it before but, where do the bats around the lake go during the winter?
...

They're in my attic!

[John A. Birdsall]

Zee ole bat comes to CT for winter an spring. crawls up on the couch and complains all winter an spring. Sometimes I wish she'd find a new home!

[Coolbreeze]

Too funny John, and to add to his post; I thinks most of the older bats from the Lakes region go to Florida until they get word that the ice is gone.

[Newbiesaukee]

but seriously, the threat to both bats and bees is real and with neither a clear cause or solution. Aside from the aesthetic cost, there is a potentially serious economic downside to bee loss and, to a lesser extent, bat loss. Although I am not the dreaded "northern tree-hugger" species, we do need to pay attention to these issues. If we lose both the birds and the bees we are in real trouble

[JayDV]

Originally Posted by Coolbreeze

Too funny John, and to add to his post; I thinks most of the older bats from the Lakes region go to Florida until they get word that the ice is gone.

Or maybe in the vernacular of the younger tv set;

Maybe someone claimed a stake in some caves and went all Buffy on the half a million roof dwellers.

But if bats are seasonal migratory rodents, then possibly the lake's mosquito (and black fly) population won't be rodent controlled this year. Do those black flies still carry forks and knives?

[Dog's Ear]

John, That was the funniest thing I've heard all day. My husband and I got a good laugh over your response.

[Merrymeeting]

I had a good laugh at it too. But I assume that "zee ole bat" is not a forum reader. If so, I fear that is the last we've heard from John!

[Irish mist]

An old-timer up here told me that in the 1950s the sky at dusk around the lake use to be black with bats.....hundreds & hundreds of thousands of them. Now of course you see no such thing....and that's not good. We need them to eat up those bugs

[chipj29]

Originally Posted by Irish mist

An old-timer up here told me that in the 1950s the sky at dusk around the lake use to be black with bats.....hundreds & hundreds of thousands of them. Now of course you see no such thing....and that's not good. We need them to eat up those bugs

That is still the case at my house in Bow. Maybe not thousands, but there are dozens of bats in my yard each night, flying around snacking on the 'skeeters. They fly in and out of the pine trees. Toss a rock up in the air, and watch them come divebombing in!

[Lin]

Originally Posted by Irish mist

An old-timer up here told me that in the 1950s the sky at dusk around the lake use to be black with bats.....hundreds & hundreds of thousands of them. Now of course you see no such thing....and that's not good. We need them to eat up those bugs

I remember when I was young staying at my great Aunt Annie's place in Moultonborough we'd see quite a few bats flying at dusk, now maybe 2 or 3. The white nose bat disease is a real threat to bats. With the loss of the bats there will be a much higher mosquito population. I hate bats but know I have to live with them as part of the ecological balance. Bats are dying by the hundreds and that's scary. Same with the bees as someone mentioned. I don't know of many crops that don't need bees to pollinate them, so a solution to the bee die off needs to be found too or we will all be suffering from high costs of food (or hunger if a solution isn't found and there aren't enough bees to raise crops.)

[COWISLAND NH]

We have plenty of bats living on Cow.....they love getting into our camp. We have built them, and bought them their own"Bat House" but still they love to come in our camp and make a mess. Never seen grown men crawl so fast out of a camp in my whole life..LOL

[Irish mist]

Originally Posted by COWISLAND NH

We have plenty of bats living on Cow.....they love getting into our camp. We have built them, and bought them their own"Bat House" but still they love to come in our camp and make a mess. Never seen grown men crawl so fast out of a camp in my whole life..LOL

Bat-houses are a great idea. Lol, guess those men don't like to be so close to bats

[Grant]

I hung a bat house on a south-facing tree on our property one spring a few years ago. By July, it had become the home for an aggressive hive of wasps, so I sprayed them and took it down. The hope was to get some more bats to live along the shore to chow on mosquitoes. Still hoping to put it back up.

[riverat]

What happens to a Bat(if anything) when it eats a Mosquito that is carrying West Nile Virus?

[SIKSUKR]

Originally Posted by riverat

What happens to a Bat(if anything) when it eats a Mosquito that is carrying West Nile Virus?

It's hunger is satisfied.

[Rattlesnake Guy]

When we bought our piece of heaven on the island the real estate listing described it as "gently sloping". The reality is that a ladder would probably tip over on much of it. We are Lucky enough to have several small caves in the rock faces. The bats seem to really enjoy these just as much as in the movies. They also seem to like our closed umbrella on the deck. We open it slowly, look up and have a visitor 90 percent of the time.

[tis]

Originally Posted by Rattlesnake Guy

When we bought our piece of heaven on the island the real estate listing described it as "gently sloping". The reality is that a ladder would probably tip over on much of it.

LOL!

[ApS]

Originally Posted by Lin

"...The white nose bat disease is a real threat to bats. With the loss of the bats there will be a much higher mosquito population..."

1) The Nature Conservancy owns an easement to Mascot Lead Mine near Gorham, NH, according to a recent mailing. Quote:

"...[Mascot Lead Mine is] a winter home (hibernacula) for about 1500 bats of five species...the mine is gated to protect the bats...It's home to the small-footed myotis, the Eastern pipistrelle, little brown bat, and the big brown bat..."

(I thought all bats were "big")

Most NH bats go out of state for the winter: a recent inventory of the Mascot Lead Mine cave (now owned by NHF&G) showed some species are down in numbers. That disease (white nose disease) is prevelant in the winter caves of New York state, Massachusetts and Vermont.

2) My shoebox-sized bat house unexpectedly "emptied out" early one September afternoon. I don't know what caused the fire drill, but seemingly hundreds poured out and milled in the woods. One glanced off my head—a first for me, and maybe for it. The bat house doesn't get full sun, so it wasn't the heat.

3) As for capturing bats inside, none has beaten my dad's midnight capture: When told of a bat fluttering around inside, he sleepily rolled over, raised up a shoe, and the bat flew directly into it!

A lot easier catch-and-release than having to pick a bat out of a landing net, I'll tell you!

(And yes, close-up, they do look like mice—toothy mice).

[ghfromaltonbay]

One summer night a group of us were sitting outside our neighbor's camp @ Sandy Point under a large tree and, as usual, the bats were swooping down around the water's edge. A few of the bats came directly overhead when suddenly a large white flash startled us. An owl had been sitting in the tree directly over us, and when a bat came too close he swooped down and got his dinner. The owl was within 2 feet of our neighbor's head when he made the catch. We never heard him coming, but boy did we all jump!

[Weirs guy]

Originally Posted by JayDV

Do those black flies still carry forks and knives?

Nope, they've changed over to chainsaws and pick axes.

[Island Life]

If you're cruising in your boat at dusk, you should encounter hundreds of bats along the way. I certainly do and it's the only time I really enjoy them. Hate when they get in the camp!!!!

As an aside, I sat at the entrance of a cave in Northern Australia at dusk and watched tens of thousands of bats emerge from the entrance. Brown snakes hung from the trees just outside the entrance and gobbled some of them up as they flew out. And those were the smallies. Their big bats - flying foxes or fruit bats - are about the size of eagles and it's pretty amazing (read: creepy) to see a bunch of those circling overhead.

[Sunbeam lodge]

I built a bat house and will build 2 more this year. We only had a few and now we have close to a dozen. They are great for keeping the bugs down

[John A. Birdsall]

I stay at the cottage in Alton Bay, near echo point, while we never had problems with bats in the cottage, I recall when I was little, (a few moons ago) there were loads of bats in the boat house. Don't recall seeing them or being bothered by them in the day. but when dusk came out the would come.

Now I get them in my house now and then in CT, and other than my daughter screaming about it. Its a pain.

Now as to the two legged bat, she just came by and put her hand out for some green stuff, and it was not the letuce either.